We Have Always Done It That Way

Fellow author Mickie started an interesting conversation on her own blog about the need to change the way we’ve always done PowerPoint. As I think about it, I can’t BELIEVE we didn’t write a post about that in our book?! Amy mentioned powerpoint in her post on Learning experiences not Conferences, but only briefly. I can’t think of a more worthy WHADITW topic than the way we use powerpoint in presentations in the association community (I remember sitting through a presentation where the presenter actually numbered the slides. It was even MORE painful knowing that that list of bullets was the 63rd I had seen that session!)

Mickie and others have been putting up good responses to the original post, linking to resources on this topic. Dave Sabol linked to Seth Godin’s writing on the topic, which, of course, contains some great WHADITW language:

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).

Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you’re busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.

Tags: Technology, The Way We Execute, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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Fellow author Mickie started an interesting conversation on her own blog about the need to change the way we’ve always done PowerPoint. As I think about it, I can’t BELIEVE we didn’t write a post about that in our book?! Amy mentioned powerpoint in her post on Learning experiences not Conferences, but only briefly. I can’t think of a more worthy WHADITW topic than the way we use powerpoint in presentations in the association community (I remember sitting through a presentation where the presenter actually numbered the slides. It was even MORE painful knowing that that list of bullets was the 63rd I had seen that session!)

Mickie and others have been putting up good responses to the original post, linking to resources on this topic. Dave Sabol linked to Seth Godin’s writing on the topic, which, of course, contains some great WHADITW language:

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).

Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you’re busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.

Tags: Technology, The Way We Execute, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
2 Comments »

Shel Israel (co-author of Naked Conversations) has a simply outstanding post on his blog about reflections on life at age 63. Really, read the whole thing. It’s great.

But I’ll quote a couple of lines that struck me as kindred thoughts to We Have Always Done It That Way:

Without discovery, you start growing old fast. Those who adopt a “been there-done that” grow old rapidly from not going anywhere new.

Habits can make you too comfortable, so every now and then break them just to see what happens.

I have outlived the eras in which conventional wisdom complacently knew that IBM, DEC, HP, Microsoft, Google and the old AT&T were too entrenched and too powerful to be disrupted by some upstart entrepreneur.

Tags: The Way We Think, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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I’m not the only one who sees the value in “middle-level thinking.” There is an article in Harvard Business Review titled “To Succeed in the Long Term, Focus on the Middle Term” that argues for the strategic importance of the middle-term time horizon. His analysis is at the large corporation level (his case study is Cisco Systems), but the lessons should be relevant anywhere. Most organizations build themselves around the short term (are we making out numbers this year) and long-term (what is our vision?). But there is a middle term where you launch new initiatives, lay the foundation for future success, and build your brand, your reputation, your R&D infrastructure, etc. The problem is, anything done in this time horizon is viewed as a failure, because our measurement systems tend to be either long-term or short-term focused:

“All companies have their established ways of assessing performance. Many have also devised their own methods of gauging whether research and development projects are progressing as hoped. Unfortunately, few have found a way to measure Horizon 2 [middle-term] efforts that takes into account their particular challenges. Instead, companies compare these projects either with those of Horizon 1 (which are much more reliable and lucrative) or with those of Horizon 3 (which are much more inspiring). Regardless of which standard Horizon 2 offerings are held to, they fall short, and whatever organization is sponsoring them is found wanting.”

Tags: The Way We Think, We've Always Done It That Way by Jamie
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